My grandmother has taught me to love stories. Strange stories, with thieves who stole a baby’s golden bellybutton so that its butt fell off, and princesses who fought their own battles. She told me stories with salt and pepper shakers, one the bride and one the groom, marching down the dining room table amidst sugar packet-flower bouquets. She told stories with the keys of a piano—the low keys the lion stalking its prey, the high keys the bird attempting to escape.

My grandmother tells stories with jewelry. She keeps her jewelry in a cabinet the size of any normal person’s dresser, in drawers upon drawers with every type of ornament from almost every continent on earth. We sat down, a few months ago, and she walked me through each item—chunky silver necklaces from Turkey, jade Buddha earrings from China, bone pendants from Africa. And if you compliment them, they’re yours. It’s how she keeps their stories going.

My grandmother tells stories with paper. When I was little we would fold white computer paper into couches, chandeliers, and book cases, and then make tiny little books with metal staples as bindings to put on the shelves. Paper houses with paper people, and she’d invent paper lives for them.

My grandmother tells stories about people. It’s her favorite type of story to tell—a whiff of good gossip and she’s at the kitchen phone, dialing the first person that comes to her head. Secrets are not sacred to her. They are stories to tell, whether or not fiction is added along the way to spice them up.

My grandmother taught me to love stories. I went to school for it, and now I work in publishing and am trying to tell my own stories on the side. Ones that I write on a computer, email to a magazine. The truth is that I often wish I could tell stories the way my grandmother does. In her hands, her fingers marching across a desk, stiff salute with her thumb. In spare items around the house, in paintings on the wall—with trivets and bells and statues. In the way that she lives her life. Every writer should be so lucky to tell stories the way my grandmother does.